FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!

^ They're adorable. They crack me up.

^ And that's on a good day

It hurts in the closet, it hurts out of the closet, it hurts standing with one foot in the closet and one foot out.

Uchi hurts.

^ If Asuka wants Tomoko, she has it in the bag. One simple thought from Asuka and Tomoko's panties fly away.

Holding on for dear wife

I love this! Don't know why, but I do.

Tomoko would NEVER say that to Asuka, but I like how Asuka zapped Tomoko at the end.

I want to see them quietly slide into each others' arms and live as a happy tsundere couple forever.

^ I agree!

^ What are you wondering about?

^ It was an astounding self-inflicted wound.

^ My concern is that she will regress in her attempts to be kind to others, which has been a delicate one based upon her dependence on the lesson she learned from someone who was profoundly kind to her.

^^^ But the makeup cliffhanger and this one are magnitudes of importance apart. The makeup cliffhanger was an unresolved gag. The Uchi plot thread is a major one that has lasted many chapters and developed over time. There may be a hopscotch situation in the next chapter, but that's a basic element of plot continuity for the series creators.

YES

This just makes me sad. Uchi is so deep in the closet that she can't find her way to the door.

Stealth Teenage Lesbian Moe

last edited at Mar 11, 2019 12:00AM

This actually made me laugh. Itou's ray aura gets me every time.

I'm still laughing.

last edited at Mar 10, 2019 11:49PM

That may not be what she WOULD do, but it is certainly what she would WANT to do.

She'd better leave Tomoko alone, though... Our sad little misfit is pretty volatile at the moment.

last edited at Mar 10, 2019 11:41PM

^ For so long, it's seemed that Uchi was a caricature and not much would happen with her. Now, the mangakas hit us with a shovel revealing the tormented person behind the emoji. This series is high art.

Please forgive me for the length of the following. I wrote this profile of Uchi and would like to share it with all of you, but there is nowhere I can think of to put it but here.

*

Because I'm unpopular, I've come up with a theory about Uchi.

First, Uchi is normal. Really normal. If we focus our memory right, we'll remember her, and there were a lot of her. The person we'll remember clearest when we remember her is ourselves. No one wants to think so, but at that age I and everyone I really talked to went through it, confused obsessive yearning "love".

Who has not stalked or surveilled someone, while in that state? Everyone has, if only between classes or minutes or seconds a day, paying attention to that puzzling person who infuriatingly may not be someone you understand liking. The rich girl or guy can't shake thoughts about a scruffy, poor kid. The scruffy, poor kid can't stop thinking about a rich kid. Precociously successful users of the other sex start fantasizing about being the passive partners of someone of their own. Proudly ignorant kids secretly envy and yearn for smart kids, and vice versa. "Bad" kids yearn for "good" kids.

All these kids, like Uchi, begin mysteriously appearing where they normally don't belong, paying strange attention in ways people don't associate with them. As Akane said, looking at Uchi walking beside her, "What is she doing here?"

Why? Because we all have voids within that need to be filled in specific, specialized ways. One of those voids is the need to achieve identity through the internalization of difference. Uchi, I think, sees herself as an "Emoji", a simple-minded, simple-faced innocuous person as Tomoko sees her. Her friends value her, but she doesn't know why. She's a cypher to herself, and she feels like a fraud, because like several other kids in the series, especially Yuri, she suspects that she really doesn't exist. Being "normal" is hell. She fucking hates it.

So this perverse, "disgusting" person, this panty-stealing weirdo, suddenly becomes relevant. But desiring an acquaintenance with that person, or an intimate relationship of indeterminate and possibly unwelcome nature, is scary as hell. So Uchi has to see Tomoko as "disgusting" for wanting her and thereby kept at some kind of distance, because Tomoko not wanting her would make Uchi collapse back in upon herself, and she fucking hates herself. But she wants Tomoko.

How? Maybe sexually. I mean, every freaking thing people are when they are teenagers is sexually charged. Sex is the functioning brain. It's more subtle for girls, but still true to a considerable extent.

But really, whatever her sexual draw, Uchi just wants to be Tomoko's friend. She wants to hang out and talk with Tomoko the way Tomoko's "harem" does, because she knows they are real friends who really know the girl she wants to get to know. The irony is that Uchi has a stellar group of friends, and finding her way back around to them will mean she is finally the person who can talk with Tomoko as a friend, who doesn't feel like an emoji, who doesn't hate her own guts.

last edited at Mar 8, 2019 3:58PM

^ Because I'm unpopular, I may try to write this.

Uchi has been trying so very, very hard to actually deal with Tomoko as another human being. What's strange is that the more she does, the more like the "old" Tomoko she becomes, skidding out of control because she tries too hard, ignoring help because of the misery of isolation, and being unable or unwilling to read what others are thinking or feeling. What's horribly ironic is that Uchi is reaching this point by wandering outside her social comfort zone, the same as Tomoko, except Tomoko is socially rising and Uchi is falling.

last edited at Mar 8, 2019 11:17AM

^^ That would be great! I'd read it in a heartbeat.

last edited at Mar 8, 2019 4:35AM

^ Get writing.